Top 15 U.S. Startup Accelerators and Incubators Ranked; TechStars and Y Combinator Top The Rankings

There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with pure co-working spaces) as they offer entrepreneurs a way to spend a few months laser focused on a single idea. Through the accelerator or incubator they receive mentoring, guidance and a small amount of funding in return for a small stake in the company. With all the startup accelerator programs popping up across the country we were curious to find out which programs would offer the biggest bang for the time, money and effort spent in the program.

As a part of his field work for the Kauffman Fellows Program (not to be confused with Kauffman Foundation), Aziz Gilani from DFJ Mercury, working in partnership with Tech Cocktail and the Kellogg School of Management, set out to determine the best startup accelerator programs in America and rank them. Assisting in the evaluation effort were Professor Yael Hochberg and MBA Candidate Kelly Quann from Northwestern University. Together there were numerous interviews with VC’s, Angels, and program graduates performed and then the data was aggregated. This is the first high-level published report of the findings – Aziz Gilani will be sharing a more detailed look at the findings in July, so stay tuned.

High-level Methodology
First, a list of startup accelerator programs across the country was compiled. To be part of the report, the programs had to meet a certain criteria. The programs were then ranked using a methodology that was created by the team, made up of three basic components. It weighed 25 percent by qualified financing events (i.e. companies that got funded after completing the program), 50 percent by the success of the companies that came out of an accelerator and finally 25 percent on accelerator program characteristics (i.e. money startups receive, equity accelerator takes, with a bonus for the size of the alumni base). Each accelerator was put through this methodology and then the rankings were generated. Additionally, these rankings were supplemented by interviews with classic VC’s, investors and past accelerator participants to better understand the perception and reputation of the various accelerator programs in the industry.

The Top Fifteen
After compiling that list, we were able to determine the following rankings for the top 15 startup accelerator programs in the United States. TechStars Boulder narrowly edged out Y Combinator for the top spot, so I’d say that if you are looking to jump into an accelerator program, take a look at these two first. We found this interesting because the two programs are very different when it comes to their approaches. TechStars takes a very hands-on approach giving founders a lot of guidance and mentorship, while according to some participants, Y Combinator has a more loose structure offering startup founders access to their strong Silicon Valley mentorship network and full-time advisors. Coming in very close in third and fourth place in the rankings respectively were Excelerate Labs in Chicago only in it’s second year of operation and LaunchBox Digital in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina (formerly based in Washington, D.C.). Taking a solid fifth place was another TechStars program, this time in Boston where there has been a resurgence of tech startup activity. Taking the sixth, seventh and eighth spots in the rankings were KickLabs in San Francisco, TechStars Seattle and Tech Wildcatters based in Dallas, Texas. Dreamit Ventures and The Brandery rounded out the top ten. Ranked 11 through 15 were Capital Factory, NYC SeedStart, BetaSpring, BoomStartup and AlphaLab in that order. Considered but not ranked: I/O Ventures, LaunchHouse, JumpStart Foundry, Momentum, Shotput Ventures, NextStart, Extreme Venture Partners University. The full ranked list of the top 15 seed accelerator programs is listed below.

2011 U.S.A. Startup Accelerator Rankings

Editor’s Note: The research team’s search for a relevant Venture Capitalist panel for this project required that all members of the panel be investors in startups sourced from accelerators. Although not the intent, the criteria may have insured that some VCs were also investors in the accelerators themselves. This may have impacted some results.‬

49 Responses to “Top 15 U.S. Startup Accelerators and Incubators Ranked; TechStars and Y Combinator Top The Rankings”

(note: I'm a YC founder with plenty of friends in TechStars– I think both programs are great).

I'd say there was a brief time where I struggled a tiny bit on the YC or TechStars debate when people asked me. TechStars was behaving like an underdog– busting their ass and upping their game every year and I think it actually got pretty close. But I think YC has had a huge surge in their (already tremendous) value over the past few years. They brought on a new partner in Harj (who is awesome), have Alexis Ohanian representing in the east, built a deeper relationship with Sequoia, and have really piled on with amazing mentorship (both inside and outside the partnership). Add the money from Milner and Ron Conway, and you now have a near 100% shot at having a year plus in runway (rather than a murky shot after months of distracting fundraising). Add to that that we're seeing 8 and 9 figure exists from YC companies with increasing frequency. And the founder network has got to be 10-20x bigger. Press exposure is larger. YC Demo Days (I presume) are much larger.

I'm glad they all exist. There's no denying that all of these accelerators add a ton of value to the startup world, and there are thousands of deserving founders for the few hundred slots available across ALL of these accelerators. But it seems hard to argue that YC isn't still the big fish in the pond.

Thank you so much for that detailed input on the progress that YC is making. The larger investment $ definitely will help startups have a longer runway to focus. Aziz Gilani will be sharing more report details with us in July, so stay tuned.

I'm completely miffed that Y Combinator isn't an order of magnitude better than any other accelerator. I'm also biased as a former founder, but the follow on financing, larger network, entrepreneurs repeating and also the success of the companies is off the charts compared to any other program. I think TechStars is amazing as well and great for the community, but still.

I seriously question the methodology used. I've run various numbers on the incubators while at TechCrunch and as a part of Y Combinator and I can't fathom how this is even close.

I think the TechStars Boulder advantage is still a mystery to the YC crowd. While both programs are good, TechStars Boulder is a big fish in a smaller pond and a closer knit community. I'm certain the experience is equally positive with YC, but maybe in a different way.

From a networking perspective, there is some overlap. It is hard to argue there isn't an equally large network at TechStars. Many reported that the recent TechStars NY demo day was the best demo day they ever attended. The bottom line is that anyone considering both programs should speak with alumni to see which is a better fit.

Frankly, I am not one for rankings as everyone's experience is different no matter which incubator they select. I am sure you can find just as many happy YC alums as you can TechStars. Select the incubator you like based on your own circumstance, not a ranking.

jmkovarik

No question that both TechStars-Boulder and YC are fantastic programs. Our analysis showed that while YC had a larger number of financings and exits, a higher percentage of TechStars-Boulder startups got financing and/or exits.

Way to be BoomStartUp! Not many people know about the "Silicon Slopes" we have going on here in Utah. SLC is a hotbed for start-ups.
My company http://www.launchleads.com started 2 years ago here in Salt Lake City, and have been thriving with the local help.

I am really glad to see this ranking of incubators. This is going to separate the real things from the also-ran ones.
But at the end of the day, are there going to be any exits of any value for the final investors?
I'd love to hear your feedback on this, and to the post I wrote on the subject: http://bit.ly/jkEwB2

High level criteria was: "It weighed 25 percent by qualified financing events (i.e. companies that got funded after completing the program), 50 percent by the success of the companies that came out of an accelerator and finally 25 percent on accelerator program characteristics (i.e. money startups receive, equity accelerator takes, with a bonus for the size of the alumni base). "

Thus, any program that hasn't graduated a class yet wouldn't make it into this year's ranking. However, TechStars NY, 500Startups, several others launching their first group of companies this year are definitely being tracked for future rankings!

Ty Danco

Rankings are always subjective–and somewhat BS–as the best place isn't always the best match. My guess is that different companies will do better at YC (if all they need is money and connections), and others will do better at any of the TechStars (if they want deep mentoring.) But regardless, every one of these programs is a tremendous boost, and the fact of their emergence is the most positive thing I know of to happen to both entrepreneurship (for the training and money) and angel investing (for winnowing down for higher quality deal flow). My disclaimer: a mentor at TS Boston. We mentors get out at least as much out of it as the companies. A great program where everybody learns, thrives, and gets inspired.

James

I think its great that Aziz put this together and it can be a very useful tool to entrepreneurs. I hope he continues to update this each year and release the statistics publicly.

I also think its worth recognizing the limitations. I was interviewed for this survey and was not able to answer many of the questions due to confidentiality obligations to our companies. So while I'm honored that Capital Factory is one of the top companies, I think it would be hard to argue that we are specifically that much better than AlphaLab because I know some of the most important details are not being compared.

That's the challenge with trying to measure this – many of the critical details about financings and valuation are not publicly available. Any thoughts on how we can address this and make the study even better next year?

Joseph Diamond

I feel like I’m constantly looking for interesting things to read about a variety of niches, but I manage to include your site among my reads every day because you have interesting entries that I look forward to. Here’s hoping there’s a lot more top-notch material coming!

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